Page 104 of Suncursed

“Good morning, Your Highness,” Felaf and Letti addressed in unison. Maryn ignored them, focusing on me instead. The room waited as all other eyes fell to me as well.

“Oh. Right. Um, morning?”

Maryn’s answering thin-lipped smile sent a shiver coursing through me. She wore a regal black dress with jutting shoulders and sheer, glittering sleeves bedecked in swirling patterns—like glyphs. The dress glinted from all sorts of jewels, fitting her bony figure tightly.

Her scrutinous gaze roved over my chest. Her steps were slow and calculated as she rounded the bed. She stopped before me, her chin high and her eyes cast down as though I were mud stuck in the crevice of her shoe. It was a warning; all it took was a single look and those around us would heed her word and inflict some form of punishment on me.

But she didn’t, and she hadn’t yet.

I stood taller. “Something the matter, Your Highness? You seem distressed. I hope you’re not still upset about what happened in the courtyard. Holding onto grudges can age you.”

A shocked gasp left the tutors' mouths. Maryn whipped her head in warning. They bowed apologetically. She handed them a rolled-up parchment and said, “Here’s her chart from Gregorios. You’ve got your work cut out for you.” She strutted out of the room without another word.

“Perhaps you all could give our princess a few minutes to prepare herself,” Felaf suggested, “and find your way down to the council room for a more suitable learning environment?”

A tutor proceeded to unroll the parchment and read aloud, “Born the twenty-first of November in Pipirima, Novah Artemis’s three significant placements are Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Leo, and Ascendant in Gemini.”

I braced for the concocted narrative Gregorios’s cards had woven about me.

Letti and Felaf drifted to the side, the former lighting the logs in the large fireplace. I stood and tightened the robe’s belt around my waist. I didn’t know how to act while these scrutinizing strangers huddled in a circle, whispering about me.

“Quite a complex, multi-layered personality,” the tallest of the advisors announced. “Moon in Leo signifies pride and dramatic, attention-seeking habits. The combination of her intense Scorpion nature and scattered focus from her Gemini ascendant placement may result in conflicting desires and inner turmoil. Though it does seem like she has the potential to be a powerful, charismatic, and strategic leader.”

Gemini ascendant. There was a piece of Gemini in my personality after all.

“Her Mercury is in Pisces though, which means she’s sensitive.”

“And impossible to give feedback to, which will prove challenging for the advisors.”

“And the barons.”

“Indeed.”

I cringed as they dissected every facet of my personality as though I were invisible. Because the truth was, their descriptions were unbelievably accurate. I didn’t want to admit it, but the Novah they described wasme.

“Emotionally complex and theatrically expressive. Her decorum will need training.”

“Fiercely loyal and deeply loving. We must keep an eye on her attachments.”

“She may struggle with oversharing while simultaneously bottling true feelings until a breaking point is reached. She’ll need proper coaching on how to conduct herself.”

My ears burned in disbelief.

It seemed Gregorios’s tarot cards proved true after all.

I finally had a natal chart that made sense, a chart that captured the true complexities of who I had been all along: a Scorpion woman.

Dying sunlight filtered through the open apertures of the observatory, illuminating the golden apparatuses and gadgets that filled every nook and cranny. Many of the trinkets reminded me of things my grandfather would have once appreciated during his scholar days.

Basil too. A hole in my chest had formed in his absence, expanding each day that passed without knowing what had become of him.

“You are acting as though your life is not on the line,” Gregorios reprimanded from the other side of his desk.

I slammed the massive book closed. “You said there’s seven months until the Equinox vote. I’ve only been at this with you for three days. I can’t imagine you were this hard on the others before me.”

All afternoon he’d described various forms of water: condensation, rain, baths, steam, rivers, beads of sweat, even blood. The shape of water was fluid and spherical—always adapting to the space it occupied. He obviously was trying to turn his lesson into a metaphor for my situation.

But all it did was make my head swim. And after my morning lectures from the tutors, I wanted to disappear.